1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic playing apparatus that is used in an electronic musical instrument to accomplish automatic playing of designated rhythms, and to an automatic playing apparatus that is used in an electronic musical instrument to accomplish automatic playing in agreement with the performance development (intonation).
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an electronic keyboard, such as an electronic organ or electronic piano, has a memory wherein automatic playing patterns, including intro, fill-in, normal, and ending, are stored for each rhythm. Switches included on such an electronic keyboard are used to select appropriate automatic playing patterns during the music production process. The keyboard reads the selected patterns from the memory, and inserts corresponding phrases during the performance.
The individual automatic playing patterns comprise data for producing musical tones for chords, bass, and drums. The pattern data stored in the memory therefore include data for chords, bass and drums, while the automatic playing patterns include intro, fill-in, normal and ending.
As a result, when multiple automatic playing patterns are provided for each rhythm, the amount of pattern data is significantly increased and a large memory capacity is required.
Further, if fixed automatic playing patterns are inserted during the production process, rather than inserting phrases corresponding to single-phrase automatic playing patterns that are read from the memory, the performance becomes discontinuous, and a gradual change in the accompaniment that agrees with the intonation of the music performance is not possible.
The inventors of the present invention, therefore, have previously devised an automatic playing apparatus, for which a Japanese Patent Application is in pending (ref., Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 58189/91), that features an intonation dial to be used to control the performance development, intending therewith to provide automatic accompaniment that agrees with the performance development.
With such an automatic playing apparatus that has an intonation dial, however, a fixed fill-in pattern is used when a fill-in is inserted; the apparatus fails, therefore, to adequately provide for performance development.